Nathan Shedroff is the Design MBA chair at CCA and also, many years ago, invented the term “experience design” which is obvious when you look at the domain name he secured probably sometime in the 80s (nathan.com).

Now. What can you actually do?

Design for Use: Usability, accessibility, clarity and meaning. You can tell your clients if they don’t make more meaningful, useful stuff, someone else will.

Dematerialization: Materials, energy and transportation. Push the suppliers and manufacturers to think about these things.

Substitution: Materials, energy and transportation. We need to know more about the materials we recommend. And maybe get rid of printed matter altogether.

Transmaterialization: Sharing things. They last longer and use less resources.

Informationalization: Don’t send the dish, send the recipe. Open source and network sharing. Architecture for Humanity.

Design for Durability: Heritage design. He uses Dyson as the example. Making something last longer, be more meaningful and also more repairable.

Design for Reuse: Maille condiment jars have been shipped in beautiful jars that can be reused as drinking glasses.

Design for Disassembly: Rickshaw bags are made entirely out of nylon, and the entire thing can be dropped into a recycling bin.

Close the Loop: Finding civic partners who can use your waste or supply your materials.

Redesigning the System: Look at a place like Curitiba, Brazil, where an architect became the mayor and transformed both transportation and the slums using design.

Redesign the System: The GDP has gone up, but the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) has done down. We should be using this system instead to define success. This is another design problem. Our economic models suck (“And if you get an economist drunk they’ll admit that,” he says).